Index and Shear Strength Properties of Clay Soil Contaminated by Tannery Effluent

Abstract

Most of the industrial effluents are disposed into land containing a variety of combination of chemicals that may bring in considerable changes in the geotechnical properties of soils. The tannery effluent is one such effluent characterized by high BOD and COD, high dissolved solids, high or low pH, presence of heavy metals, calcium salts, chlorides, sulphides, fat, liquor and organic dyes. This paper presents the laboratory results to study the effect of tannery effluent on the index and engineering properties of cohesive soil upon contamination. A series of laboratory tests have been carried out to evaluate the index and engineering properties of tannery contaminated clay soils. The virgin characteristic of clay soils is highly swelling clay of CH classification with differential free swell of 66%. Virgin clay soils have artificially contaminated with varying percentage of tannery effluent collected from Pallavaram in Chennai and tested to evaluate various properties of soils. The results had shown an increase in Atterberg’s limits as well as the shear strength with varying percentage of tannery effluent. The nature of the pore fluid has also found to significantly affect the index properties and shear strength.